How Athlytic is Connecting Athlete Influencers and Brands

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On this episode of Tea Time, Brian and Skylar chat with Ashton Keys and Jared Eummer, the Co-Founders of Athlytic. Athlytic allows athlete influencers to connect with brands and take full ownership of their brand identity with partnerships and deals. They talk about why Ashton and Jared started Athlytic, the new Name, Image, and Likeness rules for NCAA athletes, what brands are looking for when they work with athletes, and what young athletes can do to start and grow their brand.

Follow Athlytic on Twitter and Instagram.

Full Transcript:

Brian Bosche:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to High Tea Hoops.

Skylar Smith:
High Tea Hoops.

Brian Bosche:
There you go, Skylar. A little late.

Skylar Smith:
It's a little late.

Brian Bosche:
It's all right. It's an early morning. This is Brian Bosche at the Duke of Hoops. And obviously I'm joined by Skylar Smith. What's up Duchess?

Skylar Smith:
Hello. I wasn't ready for today's pod. [crosstalk 00:00:19] we get some Detroit people on?

Brian Bosche:
I know, I love it. So today we have Jared Eummer and Ashton Keys, the co-founders of Athletic, Athlytic, athletic, athlytic. Nailed that one. Welcome on the show, guys.

Ashton Keys:
Thank you. Happy to be here.

Jared Eummer:
Likewise, very happy to be here.

Brian Bosche:
Super excited to talk, but just to kick us off, do you want to tell us a little bit, both about your backgrounds? Ashton, why don't you kick us off?

Ashton Keys:
Yeah, so my name is Ashton Keys, born and raised from Detroit, Michigan, attended Michigan State University-

Brian Bosche:
Oh no. Strike one.

Ashton Keys:
[crosstalk 00:00:51], go green, go white. My background is in product management and engineering. And before starting to work on Athlytic, I worked at the Rocket companies in the day [inaudible 00:01:02] empire building digital products for all of their technologies.

Brian Bosche:
Incredible. Jared?

Jared Eummer:
Yeah, for myself. My name is Jared Eummer. Of course, co-founder of Athlytic, a graduate of Florida A&M University, the Florida, A&M University. Number one HBCU in the world. Originally from... I got to add that to my elevator pitch nowadays. [crosstalk 00:01:24], partnership and everything. Everybody knows about us now. But originally from Brooklyn, New York and prior to building Athlytic with Ashton, I worked in a corporate partnership development for the Cleveland Cavaliers previously did some work doing brand partnerships with Rod Nation as well.

Brian Bosche:
Amazing. That seems like the perfect storm of backgrounds to launch Athlytic, which we'll get into later. But as a leading question, as a Venture For America shout out, which I was in Venture For America as well. Did you two meet through Venture For America? Where did you two hookup?

Ashton Keys:
Yeah, we met at training camp, honestly.

Brian Bosche:
Wow. All right. I want to hear your Venture For America pitch then, what is Venture For America? How did you guys meet? Put you on the spot. Ashton, you got it.

Ashton Keys:
Yeah. I mean, Venture For America is a two year fellowship that places real smart people that's interested in startups-

Brian Bosche:
Super smart, like the smartest people.

Ashton Keys:
Companies, kind of like an apprenticeship where you spend two years at a startup with a goal to either expand within that company or start your own company. The good thing is things like me and Jared happened where we met through our training camp. We knew we had likewise skillsets and we were both interested in sports and that's kind of how we initially met where we didn't talk about starting a business. We would just talk about sports all the time.

Ashton Keys:
Then we would just talk about things that were happening, DM each other all the time, just messaged each other. And then eventually it just came up to the point where the name image and likeness thing was happening. And I was like, "This is something and we should start to look into this as a potential business." Because we knew it was going to be huge. But also we knew that it was a big gap and we just started talking about it and then I don't even know how the business started. It just was like a conversation that started and then we look up and we're here. Like that's literally how [inaudible 00:03:10]. It's so crazy to think about.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, that's amazing.

Jared Eummer:
Happened so fast. Happened so fast.

Brian Bosche:
I know. And before we dive into Athlytic more so Venture For America, you were in Cleveland, Jared and Ashton, you were in Detroit. So did you do things and are you at the end of the two year fellowship or have you already passed that milestone?

Jared Eummer:
Approaching August 26 was my start date. So essentially that's kind of like the end of the fellowship, but I will say to Ashton's point, no one fellow's journey is the same. I'm working at an NBA team, he's working at one of the top mortgage lending companies in the world, but the experience and just having the allyship and the support of the fellowship has been life changing, I'll say.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. So did you guys do any of the programs together through VFA or did this come up outside of kind of those pre-programmed initiatives that Venture For America puts on?

Ashton Keys:
Yeah, it pretty much was outside of it, but the thing is, I will say my community... VFA was heavily involved from the beginning. They gave us advice, a lot of our mentors were connected through VFA, we have a lot of connections through VFA. So even though it wasn't necessarily with the workshops, I kept them involved from the beginning and they have been presenting us with the right information and things that we needed throughout the journey. And they still do right now.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. I mean, they're so supportive. I met my co-founder at training camp. We started after that two year. Like it really breaks down the barriers of... Because starting a company is really scary, as you guys are finding right now, and having that community behind you, having the co-founder you've known for two years in that same community, even sharing the same values really helps you. So, I think that's a great base to get off of.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. I'm always kind of jealous of that community. I don't have that, but that's okay.

Brian Bosche:
You can borrow from us Skylar, that's what we're doing.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah, I just dip in on Brian's. So we already heard a little bit about why you guys kind of started Athlytic. Do you want to kind of give us just your elevator pitch? Like just give us what is Athlytic?

Ashton Keys:
You want to go? or-

Jared Eummer:
I'll let you go, you kick it off.

Ashton Keys:
So Athlytic. Well, we come as like a fully integrated marketplace and really to go as we're trying to create a connect student athletes with endorsement partners. So the big problem that we found is with this new market that's opening up, that never happened in the first time in history, is a significant gap. And for student athletes, they spend so much time playing their sport and focusing on school. Like they told us like, "Literally we spend about 50 to 60 hours a week on our sport in school." So they really don't have the time to go out and look for endorsement partnerships.

Ashton Keys:
And the endorsers and the marketers on their side, it's about to be 480,000 student athletes that's going to be and available to do deals. So they don't have like a partner to help them vet and identify which student athlete you said they actually market with, which student athlete should they endorse with. So really we're trying to solve that problem for the gap where trying to make student athletes' life simpler so they can keep playing at their sport and focus on that and not lose their academics, because we know that's probably something they're probably giving up. So we want them to be highly valued students. I value athletes and we want the marketers to be able to find the right partners so that they actually can reach their target markets, which is the student athlete demographic.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah, that's it-

Jared Eummer:
I'll say too, like at a high level, at the end of the day, what we're looking to do was mitigate cost, time. And [inaudible 00:06:38]. We check all three of those boxes, it's a no-brainer for both Athlytic administrations, athletes themselves, as well as brands. We're trying to make it easy for them to get partnerships done.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. Could we just, I feel like we need to just get a kind of shared definition of name, image, and likeness. I feel like it's something that it's thrown around so much these days, and I almost wonder like if people are kind of stopping and thinking what those things actually mean, or if it's just kind of these buzz words now. Could you guys literally just define name, image and likeness for us?

Jared Eummer:
The image and likeness is pretty much just the right of publicity to monetize who they are from our research, and just like our understanding of athletes and business. Athletes are the biggest influencers. If you think of the Magic Johnsons of the world that started Magic Johnson Enterprise and movie theaters, the different restaurants the Starbucks of the world. You look at Michael Jordan with Nike and what he's built throughout that conglomerate. George Foreman with the George Foreman grill. These athletes, no matter how big they are-

Brian Bosche:
Incredible examples.

Skylar Smith:
I forgot about the George Foreman grill, I haven't seen one of those in 15 years,

Jared Eummer:
Once you start thinking about it's like athletes are the biggest influencers and you look at how prevalent influencer marketing is to marketing in general right now, you look at the engagement rates of athletes versus the regular, I don't want to say Kim K because she's not regular, but you know, people that brands go to to amplify their products and their campaigns, athletes are doubling that engagement rate. So the thought is they are the biggest influencers, why can't they make money from this? If they go pro they don't go pro they could become Jason Derulo. If they don't make it to the league. That's our thought process.

Brian Bosche:
And just for it to like set the... If people aren't familiar with the NCAA rules, especially in the UK, right now, athletes can't make any money, give a current state or before this gets initiated.

Ashton Keys:
Yes. So you can't make, your athletes can not make any money and accept any type of monetary payment. Recently, 2020 is when the first law, California was the first state to pass legislation, to allow athletes to monetize their name, image and likeness, after that, we have about six states that already passed it. And then 33 States currently has in legislation. So it's looking like pretty much every state across the United States will have a law into effect, that law to pass. Two States are going to start this July, we're working to work with right now, which is Mississippi and Florida. So that was the first states that are going online. Those are going to be the first student athletes that can actually make money off their literal name, their image, which is who they are and they're likeness.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, it's extremely strict in the NCAA. So I remember a case many years ago, but there was a kicker in NCAA D-1 and he had a popular YouTube channel where he'd do trick shots, trick kicks. And he was just making money from the ad revenue on YouTube. And he had to decide whether he wanted to keep doing that and they forced him out and he couldn't play on the team anymore just cause his YouTube channel was making money. Which when you think about that, it's insane. So, and that's for anything, that's discounts, so you can't go like, get a car with a discount. You can't do anything. So, it's tough.

Ashton Keys:
You can't even get [inaudible 00:10:02]. If they found out you get like a free meal or something, they will investigate that. We've seen so many amazing athletes like Reggie Bush and people like even Zaya. Zaya made so much money, and I don't know y'all saw that recent investigation with him because of some [inaudible 00:10:16] that he received. So it's just crazy how much you think about like Duke. President Obama was at the Duke game, like literally Obama was at a Duke game and he will never go to a Duke game again, probably, but he was there because Zaya [inaudible 00:10:32], but they were upset as hell because he had received some type of benefits, but I'm pretty sure he probably tripled or doubled that for university.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. That's what makes it so crazy as these athletes are bringing in so much money for these universities and then they get nothing in return. They're not even... I know people are like, "They get the education, they get to play." But we think about like, I always grew up with the Chris Weber, like Fab Five example, like they were broke and someone bought them a meal and that was against the rules. Like it is, it's just crazy. So I have brought up 1 million times in this interview, I went to Michigan and so I loved seeing Isaiah, Isaiah Livers in the #notNCAAproperty t-shirt it was really cool to see that. And I saw the billboards as well. Could you guys just tell us a little bit about that campaign?

Ashton Keys:
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean essentially our business and what we're in the space, we're super and the name, image and likeness space and really what we wanted to do is stand with the athletes because we were super passionate about name, image and likeness, we believe that they should be able to monetize their name, image and likeness. And what better way to do that, than support them on a bigger stage. We saw what movement they were doing and we wanted to amplify their voice to push that to the masses. And that's what we did. With commissioned a billboard. We put that hashtag in rear view of everybody that can see it. The main people that recovered it, they got a chance to talk about it and see it and seen some people talk about it on social media, as well as some of the athletes. So when you essentially reached out goal, we help them push that moving forward and continue to push that narrative that athletes should be able to monetize their name.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Pretty bold to have the billboard in Indianapolis. I love the out of home, which... We're not going to turn this into a startup marketing podcast, which I would love, but we can go through that later. But it's really interesting, so it's the not NCAA property. Obviously the NCAA has come up a lot with their court case and they constantly come up. But this isn't just for NCAA athletes. NCAA is the biggest path with a lot of athletes and it can help kind of elevate their brands. But talk to us a little bit about how this could potentially be used by any athlete, regardless if they go into the NCAA or not, whether they go into overtime, elite, the first professional high school basketball league, they go overseas. What's kind of the potential for this market outside of just the NCAA.

Jared Eummer:
Yeah. I'll say the thought is that we start with like a niche market and grow and expand for myself while previously working at Rod Nation and working through endorsement deals with different athletes, understand that this no means of validating, why someone should be working with somebody like data points as far as like percentages, use grade, match, process, et cetera, et cetera. The thought is we start here and the audience grows with us. So why can't we work alongside an agent and the agency to validate who they want to pitch and say the API's on Instagram align with your brand's performance and what you guys are looking to accomplish. So I think the possibilities are endless. You think athletes are always being utilized to be amplified on any means no matter in the league or not. Look at Nate Robinson, millions of impressions as he partnered through Triller and just that whole boxing scenario. You want to work with somebody like that as well. It doesn't have to be a professional athlete or amateur athlete. It could be any athlete.

Brian Bosche:
So you're saying it could be maybe a 30 year old washed up hooper that plays pickup basketball across London. Maybe make some content on the side.

Ashton Keys:
I mean, Brian, you're selling yourself short, you're this close to a Nike deal.

Brian Bosche:
Oh, if only.

Skylar Smith:
Don't encourage him.

Brian Bosche:
Had to slip that one in. But yeah, all those picked up hoopers out there, you can monetize her name, image, likeness too, nothing holding you back. I don't know if any brands want to work with us, but that's all right. Maybe for...

Ashton Keys:
If you have the right audience, like I think everyone is trying to restart an audience. So if you have the right audience, I think we can find a brand that's trying to reach that, and that's kind of the goal. It's a brand trying to reach the audience of a 30 year old pickup. You know, you just don't know who it is.

Brian Bosche:
True.

Ashton Keys:
You're going to help them. You connect with that person. That's the real value of that.

Brian Bosche:
One of our favorite shows in the pandemic, Ted Lasso, he is working with key... Have you guys watched Ted Lasso? It's so good. It's a football, [crosstalk 00:15:10], an American football coach goes and coaches or manages a community team.

Ashton Keys:
Oh yes, I remember that, yeah.

Brian Bosche:
And he's asking the PR person for the premier league team. Like if any brands are interested in sponsoring him, not just the players. And she's like, "They said, maybe an everyday man campaign." Which is exactly what you just said, like the 30 year old pickup market. But as you guys were doing this research with brands who probably aren't interested in 30 year old pickup players, what were some of the key insights you found when you were working with both the athletes and the brands? I know you guys did a ton of research and interviews with different people as you were coming up with this concept. What were some of the key insights you found?

Ashton Keys:
Yeah, I would say like from the brands standpoint is we realized that they use tools currently to help them finding that influencers, but it was really just the database. They could search names and things like that, but they didn't have anything that made them recommendations and that they could actually tell, like, "These are the goals that we're trying to do." We actually even did it ourselves where we worked with agency and things of that nature. And they would just present us a list and it's like, well, we have to go through these a hundred people and then search up and look at their actual profiles. And then we have to see like, "Is that our audience or not? Like we don't know." And from the athlete standpoint they just literally said the same thing is this the time and how much they commit. And like, we kind of looked at like, "What do they do from media committee?"

Ashton Keys:
So like even now athletes still have to do take pictures and do all their social media and things of that nature. And we were looking at like, "How does that fit within our schedule? And how can we kind of narrow that to what we can do for an endorsement?" So what are the things they need, whether it's like a scheduling system, which notifications, if they need help with a post, like how do we make recommendations to make it as seamless and as simple as possible so that we reduce the time that they have to commit to that. And most of them seem very excited about this potential because of that, because of the fact that they were super excited, everybody's like, "Yeah, I want to make money." But when we asked them like, "Well, how do you think it would work?" No one really had an idea of how to do that, the best way to do it. And we tried to figure out like, how can we work with what their current schedule is and simplify it so that they can actually monetize and not be overwhelming,

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I mean, on the brand side, it is really hard to find influencers that match you. And there's not really a lot of good lists out there. There's not a lot that you have to like pay... I mean, there's obviously going to be paywalls for things, but there's a lot of the search platforms for influencers are really hard to navigate. And the individual platforms like Tik Tok has that creator marketplace, but that's only for Tik Tok, It's not for all the different social channels. So I totally see that. The brands that we've talked to are like, "All right. How, how do we get a hundred basketball influencers that are based in the United States?" Like that is a very hard question for them to answer right now.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Ashton Keys:
And we want to answer that [crosstalk 00:18:14].

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Definitely. Any questions on that, Skylar, how we can maybe search for a little Duchess of Hoops content when you [crosstalk 00:18:19]?

Skylar Smith:
No, I'll just let you keep chilling yourself out [crosstalk 00:18:24], I'll just take a back seat.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. I will sell out just so everyone else...

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
Go ahead, Skylar.

Skylar Smith:
I think everyone knows, but that's okay. So what is the Mountain Dew's Real Change Opportunity Fund Pitch Competition? I saw that you guys got to talk with La La Anthony and I was very jealous and also very intimidated because I knew that we were talking to you very soon after.

Brian Bosche:
You interviewed her.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. What was that like?

Jared Eummer:
[inaudible 00:18:53] was a great experience. You think even if it's just a little bit of insight or just like recognition it all helps in building a startup. But to answer your question, Mountain Dew's Real Change Opportunity Fund was a pitch competition where they worked alongside... Well they select a highly selective process. They select anywhere from about 600 to 800 applicants. They're looking for starting teams that have HBCU alum, a part of it within the past two or three years, myself being a graduated at Florida A&M, they pick the most disruptive companies. People that they thought were making real changes in the actual society. And it was a pretty highly vetted process, three different rounds. You apply, you interview, you get grilled, et cetera, et cetera. Then furthermore, we put our pitch in front of a few celebrity judges, La La Anthony, as you guys stated, DJ NV and some other like Mountain Dew executive as well as the CEO of Blavity. So it was a great experience. I can't wait for everybody to check it out Wednesday, April 14.

Brian Bosche:
So, Wednesday, April 14th, what does that mean? You got to hype it up, Jared. You're on TV?

Jared Eummer:
I mean, they select who wins. A reason why we were very, very interested is because you win regardless, as a finalist you receive a piece of a million dollar kind of like just fund. And furthermore, however much we receive is donated back to our HBCU myself going to FAMU.

Brian Bosche:
Amazing.

Jared Eummer:
I'm going to say over and over again. I'm sorry.

Brian Bosche:
Yes, no, keep doing it.

Jared Eummer:
... MSU, but however much we win, it goes back to FAMU, so it definitely feels good to donate it back to my university at such an early age.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. That's amazing.

Brian Bosche:
What was the process like to become finalists? Did you go through interviews? Did they have VCs? Like what was that getting in there? Because I mean, you guys will find with startups, there's endless pitch competitions, endless events like this. So what was it like getting to be a finalist?

Ashton Keys:
Yeah, so we went through three rounds of vetting. We had application, then we had two interviews and then we had a pitch. I think the core part, like talking to La La, because we talked to her before our pitch as well as like a mentor and she really related to what we're doing because her son, which is Carmelo Anthony's son as well, is starting amateur basketball. So he's starting high school this year, he's been playing AAU and he's becoming a brand himself obviously. And she really understood that and had like a lot of great questions about her process of going through that as a parent with [inaudible 00:21:37] that's becoming a brand every day that she know it and was excited about the platform that she could see this being of value for something like him. But also have great insights from things that we started to think about and implement is what does parents look like? What is that relationship like the parent, how we can make that...

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. I mean, imagine Carmelo, one of the greatest college careers of all time for one and done winning the championship. If he could have he made zero money from that leading up to high school and into that Syracuse win, man, that's unbelievable that you get the opportunity to talk to someone like Lala and see that family being built out. And then, so was the pitch like a zoom? Were you on TV? How did that work? And then where can people watch it on TV?

Ashton Keys:
It was a zoom.

Brian Bosche:
That's so interesting. They're doing TV through zooms now.

Ashton Keys:
So 2020, like they sent out like a GoPro for us to do an initial B roll. For the contest they sent over an iPhone, which we had to have in front of our computer, a Mac book, the kind of like interview with, as we were reading off our actual like desk, we had to look exactly into the iPhone. [crosstalk 00:22:49], kind of like situation, but yeah, it was a virtual pitch and it will be on BET, VH1 and YouTube. So it's definitely going to be great exposure. We were very thankful for that experience.

Brian Bosche:
Well, good luck guys. I mean, any exposure you can get like that early on in a startup is huge. Just surviving and getting noticed and getting that visibility. So best of luck and we'll help a lot of people tune in.

Ashton Keys:
Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much,

Brian Bosche:
Skyler. We have some big questions to finish this up with. Market changing questions.

Skylar Smith:
Big questions. How do you guys see the sports world changing and evolving as it becomes legal for student athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness. It's a big question. Whoever wants to take it.

Jared Eummer:
You want to respond Ashton?

Ashton Keys:
How do I see it changing?

Skylar Smith:
Yeah.

Ashton Keys:
I mean, I think it changes for the better honestly, and I think it really affects a lot of people's livelihoods and everyone doesn't have the opportunity to go pro, but I think everyone should have the opportunity to monetize their names. It's a lot of athletes that play in college sports. Sports is a billion dollar business and I think it changed a lot of people's lives from underrepresented community. And I think it entirely affects the communities that they come from because of that. So for me, I think it's a big, positive change. I think it's going to be growing pains within anything. I think every sport has growing pains, but I think it will be a great, great opportunity.

Brian Bosche:
Anything to add Jared?

Jared Eummer:
Yeah, something I want to say is something that we get asked, like "What does this do to the college landscape man?" Looking at the multi hundred million dollar industry that is NCAA. We're not asking to take any money from that, we're just asking some players get their fair share of the pie.

Jared Eummer:
If you take a look at our socials, we're going on different platforms and looking to figure out what their engagement rate and with their follower count how much they can make per post, I don't want to say it's minuscule, but it's pennies on the dollar to what the collegiate programs are making. We're asking that they get their fair share. They'd be in parties with these platforms, they sell their merch, they sell the NFTs. They should be able to make money off of everyone. But to Ashton's point, it's going to change their lives. They're going to change their communities. They can give back, they could bring up the next person in the generation, if they don't go pro they still have something that they could kind of like pivot to as they kind of just continue to grow foster and develop.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. I think that's what I'm excited about is just seeing how this can affect the athletes who aren't maybe like the stars either. We hear about college basketball, like what percentage of high school players make it to college basketball, then what percentage of college basketball players make it to the NBA? And they're just such tiny percentages. And then I think about like, on Michigan, there's a guy named Adrian Nunez who I've only seen him play like maybe once or twice, he doesn't [crosstalk 00:25:50] play, but he's like top 10 in followers on social within college athletes. So it's going to be really cool to see the way it affects the players who are not going to make it to the next level and how that's going to affect them. It's going to be really cool.

Brian Bosche:
It also just shuts off learning opportunities. Like if you're a freshman in college and you get the opportunity to work with brands and figure out kind of how to launch your merchant lines and set up your social channels, like that's really good entrepreneurship training. That we have Venture For America and we're lucky enough to have that community, but they're just literally not allowed to even do that, which shuts off a lot of interests like NFTs, are they really into NFTs? Are they really into their Tik Tok dances? Are they into like maybe they want to do training or coaching and they do that through their different platforms.

Brian Bosche:
So I think it also opens up that kind of the world of entrepreneurship starting businesses or starting those kinds of revenue streams early on in their careers, which they just aren't even allowed to do right now, which is tough.

Jared Eummer:
A hundred percent.

Brian Bosche:
Last question.

Jared Eummer:
[crosstalk 00:26:55],

Brian Bosche:
Yes. I mean, we love this stuff. And so I guess as name, image and likeness becomes legalized or the different States pass this, what advice do you have to athletes in high school who are kind of growing in who want to have their NCAA career? How do you think they can set themselves up to take advantage of this? And what advice do you have for these athletes?

Jared Eummer:
You go, Ashton first.

Brian Bosche:
Cass Tech?

Jared Eummer:
That's a great question, by the way.

Ashton Keys:
Oh, you said how do you think... Repeat the question I want to answer it good.

Brian Bosche:
All right. So you have so Cass tech, which one of the top schools in Detroit, you've got some incredible athletes there. A lot of hype in Detroit, when I was living there for Cass Tech athletes, what would you tell those athletes now on how they can build their social profiles, launch different initiatives, merchant lines, how do you think high school athletes can set themselves up best knowing that they can actually monetize their name, image, likeness going into college?

Ashton Keys:
Yeah, absolutely. I was recently talking to an athlete about that. I think the biggest thing is to be active and be true to yourself and find your interests and audience, because I think every athlete is different and that's what makes them interesting is them being who they are. So don't try to be anybody else. Try to be yourself. You know, we had an athlete at Michigan State who just loved his dog. You know, I was in love with his dogs, but you have a million followers because that resonated with a lot of people and that's an audience that people want to market to because people love their pets. So I think being authentic and finding what's true to yourself and finding what you love will help you facilitate those partnerships that actually work.

Brian Bosche:
That's great advice. As you don't have to borrow from other people, you don't have to try to just be the fitness influencer on Instagram or whatever. You can totally be your own, and I love the dog example.

Jared Eummer:
I say too to Ashton's point, be authentic, be organic, but tell some stories that's what the most successful people on social do, they tell stories. Tell your story, separate yourself from the competitor. Tell your story to recruit or tell your story to a brand. So your story to a future fan just push content. That's what I say.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Any other questions Skylar, as we wrap this up?

Skylar Smith:
No, I think this is such a cool and interesting conversation and it's really cool to be able to talk to kind of the first people into a new space. It doesn't happen that often. It's really cool.

Ashton Keys:
Thank you.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Thanks for coming on guys. We appreciate it.

Jared Eummer:
No problem. Appreciate the time.